Ruled by attention: A case study of professional digital attention agents at Sina.com and the Chinese blogosphere

Abstract

Much has been written about the crucial role attention plays in the digital economy and how to enhance technological features to better sustain user attention for commercial applications. However, we know very little about how myriad factors other than technological ones shape the structure and flow of online attention, and what significant implications the attention economy bears for such authoritarian regimes as China that heavily censor the web. This article fills the gap by investigating how Sina.com – the leading news and entertainment web portal in China – innovatively capitalizes on the attention economy and plays a leading role in popularizing blogging in China. This article proposes the concept of ‘professional digital attention agents’ and investigates in detail the role that these agents play in structuring, directing and publicizing online content. It argues that professional digital attention agents not only effectively popularize blogs as a new self-publishing medium in China, but also foster the ascent of critical voices from a commercially oriented Chinese blogosphere.